The Suicide Motor Club (15 page)

HANK BREWER KNEW IT WAS A BALLS-UP AS SOON AS THE SHOT RANG OUT. LETTUCE
yanked up and almost fell, the gas from his jerry can spilling everywhere. Hank dropped the Geiger counter out of sheer panic. Where'd the shot come from? Had to be the small hill across. Next shot any second, next one would kill if they weren't moving. Needed cover. Behind Jesus, that's rich but that's all there was, that or the pool.

“Run!” he said, hooking Lettuce's right arm around his neck and moving with him toward the big statue just throwing its shadow over the courtyard. Room for two or three behind the wide base, the one his sword sprouted up from into his strong, white hand. Shane beat them there. He saw his and Lettuce's four feet moving under them, his strong, Lettuce stumbling, dropping blood. Something clacked heavily on the cracked asphalt but he kept looking at their feet. Blood on his sneakers from Lettuce, Lettuce was hit deep. That was a big, bad gun out there.

Gotta move gotta move

“Move!” he yelled.

BANG!

The next shot hit Lettuce again, head shot but must have just clipped him. “Aw, aw,” the big man moaned. Nobody said anything
about guns, it was just supposed to be creepers. Jesus, the top half of Lettuce's ear was hanging. Should they get in the pool? Dead deer down there, probably hit on the highway and stumbled in, no, they'd never climb out with a shooter waiting. Flowers down there too, why flowers?

BANG!

Probably a miss, thank God for small favors.

Jesus let me live let me live

Now they stacked up behind the statue, Shane in front, Hank next, Lettuce leaning on him, heavy on him, bleeding through their shirts, saying, “Aw, aw,” but weaker. He would pass out in a minute.

“Shane, you hit?”

“No.”

Hank looked around. Motel doors closed, no help. Not sure going in there would be better. To their left, big rotting jet, Ferris wheel farther, one car rocking. Dirty, smashed-up greenhouse between the two. Car behind it, hidden from the road.

Shane peeked up but bobbed right down.

BANG!

“Keep the fuck down, that guy can shoot!”

He thought somebody was holding an ice cube against his left forearm and he looked down, saw blood trickling from a groove of mostly white flesh scored diagonally across black tattoos of crosses and Mother Mary. It looked like Mary's mouth had been shot off.

Guess he didn't miss that other shot after all prick's batting .750.

He remembered the crazy nun yelling,
You're dead, you're dead, you're dead.
Maybe she was right.

They crouched behind the statue, blind and panting. He looked again at the car behind the greenhouse.

Camaro fuck the Beta car this is real they're in there but they can't get us.

Not this second, but maybe soon.

The light seemed weaker than it had. He scanned the sky, saw the next blanket of clouds coming, minutes away.

“Lettuce, I hope to Christ you were right about daytime.”

But Lettuce was dead.

Fubar this is fubar

He looked at the motel again.

One door was cracked.

It hadn't been before.

He made a noise like a man who just realized he was on a high ledge and aimed his .45. Nothing moved.

“What's the shooter doing?” Shane said.

“Staying put if he's smart,” Hank said. “He's really got our number.”

Now Hank crawled to the side of the statue's base, risked a peek and rolled back. Nothing had moved. No shot came. A truck rolled by on Route 66.

The clouds drifted closer.

“Next car rolls by, I make a move,” Hank said. “Try to cover me.”

“I don't have my gun.”

He said it like
Ido'avemygun
, all high and tense and crammed together. He was so jacked up he might have a stroke.

“What? Where is it?”

“Judith.”

“What?”

“I left it with her. To watch the van with.”

Hank glanced at the van, saw the driver's-side door half open.

The nun's finished shouldn't have yelled at her

Hank thought to look for Lettuce's shotgun, then remembered hearing that heavy
clack
while they ran. The gun lay in the courtyard, twenty yards away. Might as well have been a tennis racquet at this range, against that rifle.

The light dimmed further, the clouds marching on.

He looked at the Camaro again, and, although it was close enough for him to see the SS badge in the center of the grill, it seemed to be a mile away.

“Can you hot-wire a car?” he said.

“No.”

“Figures.”

Could the keys be in it?

Not likely, and he didn't trust Shane to drive any more than he trusted him to shoot.

“All right, here's the plan. You run for the Camaro. I stay here and cover you. Once you're in it—passenger seat, got me?—I break and come hot-wire it while you cover me.”

“Okay.”

“Can you do that?”

“Okay.”

Hank looked back at the motel. Two doors were cracked now. One shut when he looked.

Oh fuck Oh fuck.

Darkness rolled up the road coming from Oklahoma.

An oil truck came barreling east, riding in shadow but about to break into daylight.

“When I count three, you turn rabbit. You run faster than you ever ran and slide behind that black hot rod like you're stealing home, you got that?”

“Yeah,” Shane said.

The truck broke free from the cloud shadow, looming close, light glancing off its mirrors.

“One.”

The truck shifted gears, growling as it hit a dip.

“Two.”

As the truck mounted the rise, Hank saw the driver had a cowboy hat on.

Yee fucking haw let's do this

He cocked the hammer back, pointed the .45 at the motel doors.

The truck passed the parked van, disappeared from his sight as it roared in front of the statue of Christ.

“Three!”

Shane just crouched there, trembling.

“GO! GO!”

Hank kicked at his hip; Shane staggered almost to his feet but couldn't bring himself to leave shelter and crouched back down, saying, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

“Go right now or I leave you here!”

Shane tried, he did. He half stood, shaking.

The frontier of clouds moved over the sun and cast the courtyard into shadow, the golden cape of light seeming to retreat east toward Joplin, toward Carthage.

Shane looked at the motel.

Hank looked at his face, said, “Fucking RUN!” and kicked him again, hard.

His eyes moved down to Shane's crotch, where dark liquid spread as he pissed himself.

Now Hank looked toward the motel.

He almost pissed himself, too.

Instead he ran.

BANG

The shooter's bullet whinnied off concrete and broke a window.

Christ they're so white don't look back but jig, jig

He made himself duck and break slightly left as he ran, something stretching his pants pocket and pressing his thigh

BANG

In my pocket what run faster fast

and Hank ran fast, so fast one sneaker flew off

BANG

Ping!

I know that sound my uncle told me

Shane screamed behind him, from the gunshot or them he wasn't sure and now he was past the Sabre jet, one more gap before the greenhouse and the wicked car behind it.

But the shooter's out that's what that ping was M1 pings when it's dry

Now Hank wheeled and faced
them
, bringing up his gun. He ignored what was happening to Shane—he couldn't process that now—and focused on the closest one. The tall one was almost on him, big ears on him, greasy ball cap, running fast with his long legs. Straight at him. He wouldn't have to move the gun to track the target. Hank aimed just under the brim of the baseball cap and squeezed, the big pistol bucking in his hands. The ball cap flew off, its owner jerking straight and lurching back, putting his hand to his head like he forgot something, matter falling through the greasy hair at the back of his head, and then he sat down hard. The big one with the neck brace was almost on him and he shot that one too. The big one stopped and crossed his arms in front of his face so Hank couldn't tell where the head was and it wasn't coming anymore but now he saw behind the thing.

bald one pulled Shane's jaws apart Oh God save me save me

The female was down on all fours over Lettuce, her face near the shot side of his head, her tongue working like a kid with an ice cream cone. The bald one, holding the lower part of Shane's jaw, kicked her, said, “Later, whore, sun's comin',” and now she ran at Hank. Tears streamed down Hank's face but he shot clean, shot her in the chest and knocked her down with a flat, bloody cough. The tall one had regained his feet but wasn't moving forward yet. The big one was coming, but
not fast, the hole in his arm and through his cheek already smaller, but the pain might have made it think twice.

two bullets left

in my pocket something what

He shot the tall one again, he didn't like the tall one, then pulled the round bottle out of his pocket

Holy water!

twisted the cap off with his teeth, splashed it on the big one, who turtled up with his arms crossed over his face again, but this time when the water hit him he made a sound like a deaf man yelling as his arms smoked from many places at once. The others backed up. The bald one, frustrated, threw Shane's jaw at Hank but missed.

A truck's horn blatted from the road but now he could only look at Shane. On his knees, somehow still alive, in shock, his tongue hanging free. Making a sound a man shouldn't have to make.

Christ sorry Shane sorry brother Christ

Hank shot Shane in the chest.

Shane fell back heaving, and then the heaving stopped. Hank ran to the Camaro now, saw the lock tab down, swung with his gun butt meaning to break the window, but only cracked it. He drew back for another swing he never got to take.

Something cold and hard seized him by the other arm, spun him, jerking the holy water loose so the bottle broke on the ground. The fine-boned pale one tried to look into Hank's eyes. Hank knew what that meant, looked away in time, ran months through his head like Somchai had taught him, anything to keep his mind free.

January February March April

He brought the gun around but the vampire slapped it out of his hand, so hard the hand went numb.

May! June! July!

He had one trick left. He tore his shirt open, showing the pale one
the tattoo of Christ. One shirt button ticked on the bricks and rolled. The dead one winced at the sight of Hank's chest, then vomited last night's black blood all over the kneeling Christ thereon, obscuring it.

August

Now Hank looked into its eyes.

August august

He couldn't help himself.

“You're okay,” it said.

august beautiful so beautiful i'm okay i'm really okay

He went slack and stood helpless before the smaller monster.

The one with the neck brace, his face contorted in pain, stepped up behind Hank, raised a still-smoking forearm and fist. Before it bludgeoned his head into the wrong shape, Luther grabbed that fist and stopped him. The small one put Hank's shirt back on him and popped the collar, covering most of his tattoos, then slipped his arm around Hank's waist and steered him toward the darkness of the motel room. He pushed Hank in by the small of his back, but gently, almost regretfully, as one might usher a naughty toddler into the spanking room.

“You sure fight pretty,” Cole said. “But you don't get to touch my car.”

The door shut.

CLAYTON PEEKED OUT OF THE SLIT IN HIS WINDOW DRAPES NOW, SAW A STRONG,
tattooed man helping the stout, injured man away, the latter shot through the hip, a ghastly exit wound under his navel promising death. A smaller man skittered before them to shelter behind the gaudy Christ statue that stood before the pool. The symbolic nature of the event made him smirk just a bit. The stink of gasoline persisted. He felt clouds coming, knew the sun's bright blade would soon be sheathed. A run into the woods out the back window now seemed more plausible, but perhaps unnecessary. The fight had turned. More gunfire, more woe for the breathing. Would the noise bring the constabulary around? Perhaps, but just as likely not. Men shot guns in the country, there was nothing ominous in the sound. Could there be more adversaries in the rear? Unlikely, but smart to check anyway. He crossed the ruined room, peered through the small, filthy bathroom window, squinting against the waning sun, and there, in the middle of the road, he saw an unlikely sight.

A nun in full habit crossed Route 66 in a daze, her head bleeding freely. A van perched behind her, its door hanging open. The clouds came now, robing her in darkness and clearing his vision. He blinked his eyes anyway, unsure if he should believe what he was seeing.

She was beautiful.

Even at a distance of fifty yards or more he could see there was something holy and demanding about her eyes, like God's answer to the fierce interrogation in the eyes of the undead.

He felt as though he were watching a scene from hagiography: St. Mary of the Van, though wounded, crosses the road toward devils; and though he knew he was cast in the role of devil, Clayton could not help but be moved by the tableau. He heard motel doors open, more gunfire banged, closer now; he knew slaughter was descending on the vigilantes.

He went back to the front, let himself out into the sickening but tolerable cloud-light. Now the one they called Cole was descending the Ferris wheel upside-down behind the unsuspecting pistolero defending himself manfully but without real hope against the quartet he was aware of. The other two diurnals had been made ruin of, one tastelessly so. Clayton waded through the overgrown grass and thorny vines encircling the motel, saw a truck heading for the nun. It sounded its great, froggy horn to no purpose, she was half inconscient, but before the horn's echo had faded, Clayton found himself leaping the remaining brambles and sprinting into the road. When the nun saw him, she froze. He grabbed her arm and slung her gracelessly into the brush on the motel side of the road. The truck began to brake now, its great wheels shuddering and smoking, but Clayton jogged alongside until the driver looked at him. He hooked the man with his eyes, said, “Do you like hamburgers?”

“Yes,” the man said, licking his pillowy lips.

“Well, good. Drive to Joplin and eat the biggest hamburger you dare. You never stopped here, you will remember nothing of me or the woman.”

A man screamed from the motel.

“Or that.”

“Okay.”

“Can you drive?”

“I think so.”

“Then do it, sir! And safe travels.”

The truck, which had never fully stopped, now rolled forward faster, woozily crossing the median with its leftmost tires, earning a horn blast from a westbound Chrysler whose driver never saw the man with the Indian bonnet run behind and between the swiftly separating vehicles to start the odious business of cleaning up after the massacre of the Avalon Garden of Wonders and Motor Lodge.

—

THE WOMAN HAD PASSED OUT. SHE LAY IN THE GRASS CURLED LIKE AN INFANT.
Clayton removed her black veil and her white wimple, now sopped bloody down the right side from the vicious cut along her eyebrow. Her eye was already nearly shut.

Head blow, quite a sharp one

Her thick, black hair spilled out and Clayton made a soft noise in his throat. There was something Roman about her, something of the gladiatrix, with her scarred nose and cheek and her well-made limbs. He checked the clouds—sun coming, but spotty; one golden trapezoid moving through the woods across the road looked set to miss the motel. The other monsters were already settling back into their lairs, changing rooms so as not to sleep in the ones that had been splashed with gasoline, dragging the fallen in with them; the false Indian was fetching a shovel from Mr. Nixon's red car, with which he would set to spreading dirt over the blood on the bricks. He would resume his watch when done, and then like as not they would burn this place. And then what?

Clayton was tempted to walk away now, to take his chances in the light woods. But he had not survived so long by giving in to temptation.
Besides, there was the question of the nun. He pulled up her eyelids, the swollen one with difficulty.

Rare color these eyes never seen the like

The left pupil was larger than the right.

“You've got yourself a fine concussion,” he told her. “You need a hospital, but not so badly as I need you not to burn us in our stalls.”

When he saw that the others had gone in to sleep behind their dry-rotten doors, and that the necrophile with the shovel was occupied in filling up a bucket with dirt, he carried the nun toward his own room.

“Never mind the smell of gasoline—the whole place will burn in minutes if any part catches flame,” he told Judith as he carried her through the door. “A wonder lightning hasn't done the deed, or perhaps our savior in the courtyard has warded it.”

As he shouldered the door open, looking down into her insensible face, he became aware of how much they might have resembled a macabre bride and groom.

“Your father should demand his money back for that wedding,” he told her. He kissed and licked the blood from her face, though it still ran in a stubborn trickle. He knew his spit would stop the blood and help close the wound—this was why bites on living victims closed—but thought it might not be enough for this gash. So he laid her down on his coat and with a sewing needle from his kit held briefly over a match, and with a bit of sage-green thread (to match his vest), he stitched her head while she lay breathing shallow breaths. When his work was done he bit the thread off, then laid her on her side and spooned behind her, one arm binding her, one hand pressed cold against the insulted forehead in lieu of ice. If she woke, he would wake with her and tie her with his belt. If she cried out, he would stop her mouth with his hand. He knew well that she might die of her injury. He yearned to feed from her, but the memory of the Florida woman's death rose up—he did not wish to test the nun's fragile health.

“I promise you nothing, stupid brave thing,” he whispered into her ear, “but that I shall try, mind you
try
, to stop them from killing you. And if I can, I shall paint your portrait.”

—

AN HOUR BEFORE SUNSET A KNOCK WOKE CLAYTON. AT FIRST HE WAS BEWILDERED
to feel his chest and arms so warm, even his chin where it rested on a living head, and then he remembered. The knock came again. He uncurled himself from around the injured nun and took up his sunglasses to peer from the window slit. The queer lad Woods stood there, divested of his Stuckey's feather bonnet, a pile of clouds bulking behind him. The westering sun lit those clouds painfully in Clayton's eyes, even filtered through his shades, so they might have been pillars of molten ore.

“Open up,” Woods said. “They want her.”

“Whom do they want?” he said.

“The nun.”

“Well, they shall have none.”

A pause.

“Funny. Open up.”

Now Luther's voice came through the wall.

“Do like he says. We need to ask her some things.”

“She is not yet conscious.”

“Then he'll drag her.”

At his peril,
he nearly said but choked those words back.

There would be no fighting this bunch. He would be a match for any one of them, perhaps two, but certainly not all of them. What they lacked in age and strength they more than made up for in viciousness. He looked at the woman where she slept, admired the handiwork of his stitches. What would she say if she woke and saw him? He remembered the look of terror in her eyes when she glimpsed him on the road, just before he slung her from the truck's path. He had on
several occasions met diurnals who could see through the low-voltage charm all vampires unconsciously ran to hide their killing teeth and present a more pleasant reflection, although that charm wore thin during daylight hours. Would those rare eyes of hers betray him as the corpse he was, even at night?

“No need for that,” he told the voice behind the wall. “I shall bring her.”